


What the Ghost Wants

by GloriaMundi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 03:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5114165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried. Like you said, he's a ghost story."<br/>"Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."</p><p>A love story for Halloween.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Ghost Wants

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Что хочет призрак](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124545) by [Saysly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saysly/pseuds/Saysly)



The night that Fury dies, Steve sees the ghost again. 

He's familiar with deja vu. He's learnt not to do a double-take when he spots Becca Barnes, or Colonel Phillips, or his fourth-grade teacher. He'll just keep looking. If he looks long enough, recognition resolves to resemblance.

The ghost is different. The face he saw across the roof, the moment before Fury's killer hurled Steve's shield back at him with deadly force -- the eyes above that mask -- was, is, the face of Bucky Barnes. 

Sergeant James Barnes, who died in 1944.

* * *

After the hospital, for lack of anywhere else to go, he heads home. The apartment is a mess, though someone's cleaned up the worst of the blood. There are dark splatters on the loveseat; there are bullet holes in the wall itself, and pencil marks where the techs have analysed angles and calibre. 

The Winter Soldier shot Fury through the damned wall. Steve doesn't want to think about the skill, the accuracy, the deadliness that implies.

He looks out through the shattered window, hoping for a glimmer of silver.

The ghost is staring back at him. The mask is gone now. Revealed is a face that Steve knows better than his own. Back in the day, Steve spent a heck of a lot of time looking at Bucky Barnes. Looking with intent. Looking with his heart in his eyes (the heart sees what eyes can't.) 

"Bucky," he says helplessly.

The ghost's lips move, but though the night is quiet Steve can't hear what he's saying.

Between one blink and the next, the ghost is gone. Steve searches until daybreak. Finds nothing.

* * *

"They say he never talks," Natasha tells them.

"Figures," says Sam. "Scarier that way. Like --"

"It's not true," says Natasha. "He spoke to me."

"What did he say?"

Natasha meets Steve's gaze steadily. Steve braces himself for a lie.

"He told me he was sorry," she says.

"Why the hell would he do that?" says Sam. 

"He shot you," says Steve, "and then he apologised?"

Natasha shrugs. "I shot him too," she says. "There was blood all over his face." 

"Did _you_ apologise?" says Steve. "Wait: all over his face? So he wasn't wearing the mask?"

Natasha shakes her head.

* * *

Sam's caught Sitwell mid-air (Steve can smell where the guy's pissed himself) and flung him down on the roof. Steve has a sudden strong sense that he's being watched. He looks around, up, at the building across the street. The ghost is staring at him from a window across the street. He's not wearing the mask. He is Bucky Barnes.

Steve catches Natasha's eye, angles his gaze back up at where the ghost is watching.

There's nobody there.

* * *

"He's not a ghost," says Sam. "He caught your shield, man! He took out Fury with bullets, not with some voodoo shit!"

"I saw him," says Steve. "It was Bucky. And I saw him fall from the train."

"Did they ever find his body?" says Natasha.

Steve glares at her. She's well aware that Barnes is still, officially, MIA. No burial at Arlington, no bones resting in the quiet earth. "No," he snaps.

"Maybe he survived the fall," says Natasha. " _You_ could've survived it."

"Bucky never got Erskine's serum," says Steve.

"Maybe he got someone else's," says Natasha.

* * *

Steve sees the ghost wherever he goes, now. The ghost is following him, watching him. The ghost does not wear the mask, and he never speaks aloud, though sometimes it looks like he's trying to say something. Steve wishes he could lip-read. 

The ghost takes out an entire STRIKE team who are closing in on Steve at the Triskelion. His weapons are very real, and very deadly.

The ghost vanishes between one moment and the next, as though he's slipped sideways into another place.

* * *

"You're hallucinating, Cap," says Sam. "Number one: if Bucky Barnes was a ghost, why would he show up now? And that's just assuming you believe in ghosts, which --"

"You'd believe in them if you saw Riley," says Steve. 

Sam winces. "Low blow, man."

* * *

"James Barnes died," says Natasha. "Whoever you're seeing, it's not Barnes."

"Even when I had nothing," says Steve, "I had Bucky. It's him, Natasha. I --"

"Captain Rogers," says Natasha, "you're compromised. You're seeing what you want to see." 

"What I --" Steve scowls at her. "What I _want_ to see is not the ghost of my dead best friend." 

"What you _need_ to see," says Natasha coolly, "is what's happening to SHIELD." 

* * *

The ghost is waiting for Steve on the helicarrier. He's masked again, but Steve doesn't need to see him full-face.

"You're Bucky Barnes," says Steve.

The ghost says nothing: he raises his weapon and fires at Steve, three shots. Steve puts the pain aside for later. Bucky's presence, Bucky's _reality_ , is more important than temporary discomfort.

They close. They grapple. The ghost is strong and fast and _solid_. His metal fist crashes into Steve's body again and again. Steve hits back. He rips the mask off, hurls it away with all his strength.

"You're Bucky Barnes," he says again. "You've known me your whole life."

"I'm not alive," says the ghost. There's blood all over his mouth from where Steve hit back. 

"You --" manages Steve, suddenly breathless.

"I died," says the -- says Bucky. 

"You're here," says Steve. "You've been following me."

"You're Steve," says Bucky, frowning. "I gotta follow you."

* * *

Steve wakes up on the bank of the Potomac. Bucky is standing over him. The river is aflame with burning fuel. The sky is filled with roiling smoke. There are helicopters circling above DC. Bucky is the most alive thing that Steve can see. 

"Come with me," says Bucky. There's blood on his face, and he licks his lips. It's the blood, Steve realises or remembers, that lets him speak. "Come with me, Steve." 

Bucky turns, looking back over his shoulder, and starts to walk away. Steve --

_when I had nothing I had Bucky_

_the heart sees what eyes can't_

_"I died"_

\--Steve gets up out of his battered, hurting, broken body and follows.


End file.
